Lisa Marie Presley Sues Former Manager for “Loss of Inheritance”

The late Elvis Presley’s daughter is suing her former business manager for the “reckless and negligent mismanagement” of her inheritance, according to recent news reports.

Barry Siegel denies the claims made by Lisa Marie Presley. The late singer’s daughter claims Siegel is responsible for the loss of the wealth she inherited from her father, Elvis. The icon left only a few million dollars when he died in 1977, but that fortune had escalated to $100 by the time his daughter inherited his estate in 1993 when she was 25.

Ms Presley says she only has cash reserves of $14,000 (about £10,000), thanks to poor investments she says Mr Siegel made. She charges him with “self-serving ambition”, and claims that he put her assets in unsound investments in a bid to attain his own celebrity status in the entertainment business.

Mr Siegel disputes Ms Presley’s claims and is apparently counter-suing. He accuses Ms Presley of having what he refers to as uncontrollable spending habits and that she seeks to blame others for her actions, instead of accepting responsibility.

He says she refused to take notice of her most trusted advisers and “has only herself to blame for her financial and personal misfortunes”.

Mr Siegel sold 85 percent of Ms Presley’s shares in Elvis Presley Enterprises in 2005. This, he said, cleared up debts Ms Presley had acquired, some $20 million. It also brought in more than $40 million in cash and a “multi-million dollar income stream”.

Ms Presley says Mr Siegel invested the money she made from the sale of Elvis Presley Enterprises and invested in a company called Core Entertainment, the parent group for American Idol. In the lawsuit documents, Ms Presley says when the company went bust in 2016, she lost £24.5 million.

Ms Presley has claimed that she is $16 million in debt.

Finders International founder and managing director Danny Curran says: “Inheritance disputes can be extremely messy, as this case proves. When it comes to our work, one of the inheritance issues we deal with is missing heirs. We offer missing beneficiary indemnity insurance policies where we have either completed a full report or have independently verified existing research.

“The purpose of the policies we provide is to make sure that once an estate is distributed, those who have benefited will never be asked to repay all or part of their inheritance in the future. It’s needed when specific heirs or branches of a family tree just can’t be traced, or it’s no longer economically feasible to continue working to find the missing heirs.”

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